Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right?

Like this:

The bad (either intentionally or unintentionally) UI of skillpages.com has caused me quite a bit of personal embarrassment today. I usually let web services have a peek into my gmail contacts as an easy way of knowing if anybody I know is using the service I am interested in. I NEVER let the web service email everybody I have in my contacts. What sane person today would even consider such a thing? Today exactly that happened. The UI/Marketing team at skillpages failed epically in my eyes for two reasons.

Allowing the “Skip” button to move.

Automatically selecting all my contacts at the invite screen.

Here is a plea to the internet:Do not use skillpages. Tell everybody you know not to use skillpages. Perhaps then this epic fail will never happen again.

Like this:

Ken’s first test subject was Alan Melvin, a world-class Masters thriathlete in his sixties. First, Ken set a baseline by having Melvin run four hundred meters full out. The he clipped a small electric metronome to his T-shirt.